Caiman Consulting Corp. Blog Why is your LinkedIn profile so important?

There are a lot of opportunities in the current job market and potential job-seekers should be prepared to take advantage of this! Successful placement is not only critical to a company's success but important to recruiters as well. The competition is tough right now for recruiters, so candidates have some leverage. In fact, 45% of recruiters are having difficulty filling positions due to a shortage of talent. Social media sites are becoming a common recruitment tool: at least 84% of organizations are currently using social media for recruitment and 9% of those who don't use it yet are planning to. LinkedIn is Caiman Consulting's Talent Acquisition's go-to so I wanted to provide some helpful tips to get you noticed by our team.BrandingResumes used to be the quickest way to get a hiring manager's attention. That's not necessarily the case anymore. According to Fast Company, 87% of recruiters use LinkedIn to vet candidates, and traditional resumes are becoming obsolete. Technology has changed the market place and it's giving candidates a fair opportunity to compete.Personal branding coach Jennifer Holloway's 7 tips to developing and personalizing your brand on LinkedIn are key to standing out. Establishing a credible web presence and telling your story are great ways to subtly present yourself without letting your current employer know you are open to opportunities. Market to who matters.Customize your LinkedIn Headline and don't use generic text in your Profile Summary describing what you do. First impressions are everything so the profile photo you use, the header title, and the profile summary are really important. Last, quantify your accomplishments to help demonstrate your value!Talent Acquisition SearchesBoolean search strings allow recruiters to combine keywords to produce more relevant results. It is a proactive way of sourcing, which means actively searching for the ideal candidate. If your profile and branding doesn't target the keywords being used, we (recruiters) may not find you. A well-executed Boolean search can lead to highly qualified candidates. Eventually, sourcing will be automated anyway and recruiters will be spending the majority of their efforts on more value-added tasks like people analysis, influencing, and closing - not searching for the right candidate which is where the majority of Caiman's talent acquisition team's attention is spent today. At the end of the day, machines can do it faster and as discussed in a recent Chad and Cheese Podcast, humans should be focused on more human things like reaching out and being brand ambassadors. It's a great time to prepare and get ready for those bots!Ultimately, words matter and you need to be found to be hired. More than 95% of Fortune 500 companies use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to streamline the recruiting process. A career expert with TopResume suggests customizing your profile for keywords and incorporating words from a job description into your resumes two to three times each, with at least one mention coming in your work experience section. Keyword optimization is important for your LinkedIn profile - here is a link to some SEO tips to help you.Last, my blog post from 2017 is still relevant to what our talent acquisition team is looking for: critical thinkers, consultants with client-facing experience, and culture adds! Please take a moment to read the blog if you haven't already and reach out to someone on our talent acquisition team if you are interested in learning about the core profiles we are recruiting for this year!Sierra Eberly, https://www.linkedin.com/in/sierraeberly/Kristen Raab, https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-raab/Britt Thompson, https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanynjohnston/Britney Carlson, https://www.linkedin.com/in/britney-carlson-37290380/